Michael Dunn is hugged by his mother Patricia Dunn as they stand in the road that lead to his house which was completely destroyed after a tornado touched down, Wednesday, April 27, 2011 in Concord, Alabama

Dozens of tornadoes ripped through the US South, flattening homes and businesses and killing at least 248 people in six states in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years.

US President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Alabama and ordered federal aid.

As day broke, people in hard-hit Alabama surveyed flattened, debris-strewn neighborhoods and told of pulling bodies from rubble after the storms passed Wednesday afternoon and evening.

“It happened so fast it was unbelievable,” said Jerry Stewart, a 63-year-old retired firefighter who was picking through the remains of his son’s wrecked home in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham.

He and his wife, along with their daughter and two grandchildren, survived by hiding under their front porch. Friends down the street who did the same weren’t so lucky — Stewart said he pulled out the bodies of two neighbors whose home was ripped off its foundation.

Alabama’s state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 162 deaths, while there were 32 in Mississippi, 32 in Tennessee, 13 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and one in Kentucky.

President Barack Obama said he would travel to Alabama on Friday to view storm damage and meet with the governor and affected families.

Some of the worst damage was in Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 that is home to the University of Alabama. Neighborhoods there were leveled by a massive tornado caught on video by a tower-mounted news camera that barreled through late Wednesday afternoon.

“When I looked back, I just saw trees and stuff coming by,” said Mike Whitt, a resident at DCH Regional Medical Center who ran from the hospital’s parking deck when the wind started swirling and he heard a roar.

On Thursday morning, he walked through the neighborhood next to the hospital, home to a mix of students and townspeople, looking at dozens of homes without roofs. Household items were scattered on the ground — a drum, running shoes, insulation, towels, and a shampoo bottle. Streets were impassable, the pavement strewn with trees, pieces of houses and cars with their windows blown out.

Dr. David Hinson was working at the hospital when the tornado hit. He and his wife had to walk several blocks to get to their house, which was destroyed. Several houses down, he helped pull three students from the rubble. One was dead and two were badly injured. He and others used pieces of debris as makeshift stretchers to carry them to an ambulance.

“We just did the best we could to get them out and get them stabilized and get them to help,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

Back from an aerial tour Thursday morning, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox said the tornado tore a streak as many as 4 miles (6 kilometers) long and a half-mile (a kilometer) wide of “utter destruction.” There are at least 36 people dead in the city’s police jurisdiction, and searches continue for the missing.

“We have neighborhoods that have been basically removed from the map,” he said.

Because the city’s emergency management building was destroyed, authorities are using Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama as a command post.

University officials said there didn’t appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.

The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out. The governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia issued emergency declarations for parts of their states.

Dave Imy, a meteorologist with the prediction service, said the deaths were the most since a tornado outbreak killed 315 people in 1974.

In Alabama, where as many as a million people were without power, Gov. Robert Bentley said 2,000 national guard troops had been activated and were helping to search devastated areas for people still missing. He said the National Weather Service and forecasters did a good job of alerting people, but there is only so much that can be done to deal with powerful tornadoes a mile wide.

Obama said he had spoken with Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance.

“Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster,” Obama said in a statement.

The storms came on the heels of another system that killed 10 people in Arkansas and one in Mississippi earlier this week. Less than two weeks earlier, a smaller batch of twisters raced through Alabama, touching off warning sirens, damaging businesses and downing power lines in Tuscaloosa, but there were no deaths there then.

In Kemper County, Mississippi, in the east-central part of the state, sisters Florrie Green and Maxine McDonald, and their sister-in-law Johnnie Green, all died in a mobile home that was destroyed by a storm.

“They were thrown into those pines over there,” Mary Green, Johnnie Green’s daughter-in-law, said, pointing to a wooded area. “They had to go look for their bodies.”

And in Pleasant Grove, Alabama, Samantha Nail surveyed the damage in the working-class subdivision where hers was the only home still intact. The storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children’s toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live.

“We were in the bathroom holding on to each other and holding on to dear life,” Nail said. “If it wasn’t for our concrete walls, our home would be gone like the rest of them.”

Laurel Lockamy thought she had seen the worst of the oil disaster last summer when waves of oil and tar patties washed onto her beach in Gulfport, MS, taking a major toll on the local tourist industry.

But now a new disaster is unfolding, she says, just as beachgoers are heading back to the water. A large spike in the number of dead sea turtles is being reported across the beaches of the Magnolia State. Residents now find them rotting in the springtime sun along with other animals and birds that float in with the tides.

Laurel has photographed three dead sea turtles on this stretch of sand in the past two weeks. Like other Mississippi residents, she’s never seen one dead—or alive—before.

Earlier this week, Laurel went out to the Gulfport beach with her camera to see if any new turtles had washed in. First she saw a dead armadillo curled up in the sand, along with several other dead birds. But a short stroll later she came across another turtle, decomposing along the water’s edge.

Over an hour later, she says, a crew from the IMMR showed up, took pictures and measurements, spray painted it with orange paint for pickup, and then left the turtle on the beach. A county beach worker told her they scooped up another turtle not far away and took it to the dump.

“They didn’t do any testing,” Laurel says, “they just measured it, sprayed it and left it on the beach to rot. This is ridiculous. Why isn’t anyone testing them? I’m terrified to go to the beach these days.”

NOAA Fisheries Service says its turtle stranding network collects all newly found or moderately decomposing turtles for testing to try to determine cause of death, include drowning from fishing nets, biotoxins and disease or complications from oil pollution.

Connie Barclay, a NOAA fisheries spokeswoman, said all turtles that are collected are tested, but so far no test results of the recent strandings have been made public. Local authorities are responsible for disposing of turtles that have already been counted and examined. “We get out there as quickly as we can,” she said. “We don’t just leave them there for days and days.” she said.

But according to some Gulf residents, that’s exactly what’s happened in some cases. Pass Christian resident Shirley Tillman has witnessed 13 dead sea turtles washing up on beaches near her home, nearly all in the past few weeks. Earlier this week she found four on one day. She says in several cases she’s called the IMMR and NOAA authorities and given them coordinates to have the turtles picked up, only to go back and find they haven’t been picked up for days.

“I’m getting tired of going out there and trying to get people to pick them up,” says Shirley, a grandmother and wife of a Pass Christian home builder. “These turtles just lay there decomposing and the stuff just explodes and stuff oozes out of them. Who’s going to keep the kids from coming over and play in the sand right next to them?”

Dead armadillo found near turtle on Gulfport beach Photo by Laurel Lockaby

NOAA says they’ve found more than 60 dead sea turtles in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana through April 3 of this year, nearly all of them in the past month. [NOAA updated numbers as of later today are now nearly 100 stranded turtles this year, 87 since mid-March]. Even though turtle strandings tend to spike in the spring, this is a high number of turtles to strand in these areas. NOAA records show most are found along the gulf coast of Florida and Texas. Experts say the number of turtles carcasses recovered represents a small fraction to the toal number that have died.

IMMR, which collects endangered turtles and federally protected dolphins stranded in Mississippi and Alabama, says its crews go out and bring the turtles back for necropsies, which are handled by the federal government. “We’ve been crazy busy,” says Shannon Huyser, a stranding coordinator. “But we usually get there the same day we get the calls. If they’re not too decomposed, we bring them back for necropsies. But that’s pretty rare.”

But some residents think more needs to be done. They wonder why it sometimes takes so long for these turtles to be picked up and tested. They worry that the spike in turtle deaths, like the dead baby dolphins washing in, shows something isn’t right with the Gulf after the worst oil spill in US history.

But most of all, they are praying these lifeless ancient animals of the sea aren’t a sign of worse things to come.

Reservations for a doomsday bunker in the U.S. have rocketed since Japan‘s catastrophic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown.

The 137,000sq ft bunker – designed to house 950 people for a year and withstand a 50 megaton blast – is currently being built under the grasslands of Nebraska.

Vivos, the California-based company behind it, is taking $5,000 (£3,100) deposits, which will have to be topped up to $25,000 (£15,600) to secure a place.

Cower in luxury: Vivos’s doomsday shelters are to be kitted out with all the modern conveniences American consumers would expect

Social space: The company is building one bunker under the grasslands of Nebraska with the capacity to house 950 for a year

Paranoia: Vivos says applications for its luxury bunkers have gone up 1,000 per cent since the Japan earthquake

It says applications have soared 1000 per cent in the wake of the disasters in Japan. And the bunkers will be kitted out with all the modern conveniences the American consumer has come to expect.

Once finished the complex will feature four levels of residential suites, a dental and medical center, kitchens, pet kennels, a bakery, a prayer room, a fully stocked wine cellar and even a prison to detain any misbehaving residents.

There will also be a 350ft tall lookout tower so residents can see what is going on around them – and if it’s safe to emerge.

‘People are afraid of the earth-changing events and ripple effects of the earthquake, which led to tsunamis, the nuclear meltdown, and which will lead to radiation and health concerns,’ said Vivos CEO Robert Vicino.

Self-contained community: Once finished the bunker complex will feature four levels of residential suites, a dental and medical center, kitchens, pet kennels, a bakery, a prayer room and a fully stocked wine cellar

Limited space: The firm is taking $5,000 deposits for their bunker, which will have to be topped up to $25,000 to secure a final spot

The news comes after low levels of radiation were detected in milk in two U.S. states, the first sign Japan’s nuclear crisis is affecting American food.

At least 15 states have now reported radioactive particles from the stricken Fukushima reactor. Earlier in the week the Environment Protection Agency confirmed radiation was found in air filters in Alabama and in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Though the trace levels are very low and not hazardous to health, residents have been warned not to use rainwater which has been collected in cisterns.

Rebuilding society: The bunker even features a prison in case any residents misbehave and become a liability to others

Safe space: The company claims its bunkers are designed to withstand a range of catastrophic events, from nuclear terrorism to the gravitational havoc caused of a rogue planet sweeping across the solar system

Intimate: Space is limited in the bunker, the floor-plan of which resembles a youth hostel in this graphic

Mr Vicino added: ‘Where it ends, I don’t know. Does it lead to economic collapse? A true economic collapse would lead to anarchy, which could lead to 90 per cent of the population being killed off.’

The company claims its bunkers are designed to withstand a range of catastrophic events, from nuclear terrorism to the gravitational havoc a rogue planet sweeping across the solar system could cause.

Interest in doomsday bunkers has grown over recent years, but critics say developers are simply trying to cash in on public panic. Oleg Repchenko, the head of Russian analytical centre ‘Indicators of Real Estate Market’, told The Voice of Russia: ‘These fears emerged in the US a long time ago back in the Cold War era.

‘September 11, 2001 has seriously affected the psychology of common Americans and part of the population is afraid of disasters and terrorist attacks.

‘Panicking is quite typical for Americans even when a disaster happens not on their territory but across the ocean in Japan. Once something terrifying happens it makes people think more about their future.’